Contempt

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Trash (1988)

  Shirley Wilmer, of the Knoxville County Wilmers, married Tucker Boatwright when she was past nineteen, and he was just barely sixteen. Her family had a peanut farm off to the north of Knoxville, a piece of property they split between the five sons. Shirley was the only daughter. Her inheritance was a cedar chest full of embroidered linen and baby clothes that she and her mama had gotten together over the years—that and sixty dollars in silver that her daddy gave her, a fortune in those days. Granny Mattie swore that when Grandma Shirley died, those silver coins were still tied in the same cloth in which she had gotten them. Two of Grandma Shirley’s children died of the flu after gathering melons on a frosty fall day. People swore you could cure the flu with a bath of hot oil and comfrey, but Shirley wasn’t the kind to gather herbs and certainly not the kind to spend her silver on someone who would. She’d never wanted children anyway—not really—and hated the way her body continuously swelled and delivered. She called the children devils and worms and trash, and swore that, like worms, their natural substance was dirt and weeds. Shirley Boatwright believed herself to be one of the quality . “The better people,” she told her daughters. “They know their own. You watch how it goes; you watch how people treat me down at the mill. They can see who I am. It’s in the eyes if nothing else.” Mattie, the oldest girl, watched the way her mama’s lips thinned and tightened, the way her sisters and brothers held their own mouths pinched together so their lips stuck out. Shirley Boatwright was proud of getting on at the mill and of how much she earned there, as proud of that as she was ashamed that Tucker still worked in the coal mine. “A tight mouth,” Tucker Boatwright was heard to say. “A tight mouth betrays a tight heart, and a shallow soul.” His wife said nothing, but pulled her lips in tighter still, and the next day Tucker found the doors locked against him when he came home from the mine. “Woman, what do you think you’re doing?” He beat on the front door with a swollen dirty right fist. “Woman, open this door!” He spit and shouted and kicked the base of the doorjamb. “Kids, do you hear me? Shirley? Woman?”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Bruno had so great a mind to laugh that he was like to burst; however he contained himself and the physician, having made an end of his song, said, 'How deemedst thou thereof?' 'Certes,' answered Bruno, 'there's no Jew's harp but would lose with you, so archigothically do you caterwarble it.' Quoth Master Simone, 'I tell thee thou wouldst never have believed it, hadst thou not heard me.' 'Certes,' replied Bruno, 'you say sooth!' and the physician went on, 'I know store of others; but let that be for the present. Such as thou seest me, my father was a gentleman, albeit he abode in the country, and I myself come by my mother of the Vallecchio family. Moreover, as thou mayst have seen, I have the finest books and gowns of any physician in Florence. Cock's faith, I have a gown that stood me, all reckoned, in nigh upon an hundred pounds of doits, more than half a score years ago; wherefore I pray thee as most I may, to bring me to be of your company, and by Cock's faith, an thou do it, thou mayst be as ill as thou wilt, for I will never take a farthing of thee for my services.' Bruno, hearing this and the physician seeming to him a greater numskull than ever, said, 'Doctor, hold the light a thought more this way and take patience till I have made these rats their tails, and after I will answer you.' The tails being finished, Bruno made believe that the physician's request was exceeding irksome to him and said, 'Doctor mine, these be great things you would do for me and I acknowledge it; nevertheless, that which you ask of me, little as it may be for the greatness of your brain, is yet to me a very grave matter, nor know I any one in the world for whom, it being in my power, I would do it, an I did it not for you, both because I love you as it behoveth and on account of your words, which are seasoned with so much wit that they would draw the straps out of a pair of boots, much more me from my purpose; for the more I consort with you, the wiser you appear to me. And I may tell you this, to boot, that, though I had none other reason, yet do I wish you well, for that I see you enamoured of so fair a creature as is she of whom you speak. But this much I will say to you; I have no such power in this matter as you suppose and cannot therefore do for you that which were behoving; however, an you will promise me, upon your solemn and surbated[403] faith, to keep it me secret, I will tell you the means you must use and meseemeth certain that, with such fine books and other gear as you tell me you have, you will gain your end.'

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The papal party boasted of a complete victory. All innovations were forbidden; Zwingli was excommunicated; and Basle was called upon to depose Oecolampadius from the pastoral office. Faber, not satisfied with the burning of heretical books, advocated even the burning of the Protestant versions of the Bible. Thomas Murner, a Franciscan monk and satirical poet, who was present at Baden, heaped upon Zwingli and his adherents such epithets as tyrants, liars, adulterers, church robbers, fit only for the gallows! He had formerly (1512) chastised the vices of priests and monks, but turned violently against the Saxon Reformer, and earned the name of "Luther-Scourge "(Lutheromastix). He was now made lecturer in the Franciscan convent at Lucerne, and authorized to edit the acts of the Baden disputation.165 The result of the Baden disputation was a temporary triumph for Rome, but turned out in the end, like the Leipzig disputation of 1519, to the furtherance of the Reformation. Impartial judges decided that the Protestants had been silenced by vociferation, intrigue and despotic measures, rather than refuted by sound and solid arguments from the Scriptures. After a temporary reaction, several cantons which had hitherto been vacillating between the old and the new faith, came out in favor of reform. § 31. The Reformation in Berne. I. The acts of the disputation of Berne were published in 1528 at Zurich and Strassburg, afterwards repeatedly at Berne, and are contained, together with two sermons of Zwingli, in Zwingli’s Werke, II. A. 63–229. Valerius Anshelm: Berner Chronik, new ed. by Stierlin and Wyss, Bern, 1884, ’86, 2 vols. Stürler: Urkunden der Bernischen Kirchenreform. Bern, 1862. Strickler: Aktensammlung, etc. Zurich, 1878 (I. 1). II. Kuhn: Die Reformatoren Berns. Bern, 1828. Sam. Fischer: Geschichte der Disputation zu Bern. Zürich, 1828. Melch. Kirchhofer: Berthold Haller oder die Reformation zu Bern. Zürich, 1828. C. Pestalozzi: B. Haller, nach handschriftl. und gleichzeitigen Quellen. Elberfeld, 1861. The monographs on Niclaus Manuel by Grüneisen, Stuttgart, 1837, and by Bächthold, Frauenfeld, 1878. Hundeshagen: Die Conflicte des Zwinglianismus, Lutherthums und Calvinismus in der Bernischen Landeskirche von 1532–’58. Bern, 1842. F. Trechsel: articles Berner Disputation and Berner Synodus, and Haller, in Herzog2, II. 313–324, and V 556–561. Berner Beiträge, etc., 1884, quoted on p. 15. See also the Lit. by Nippold in his Append. to Hagenbach’s Reform. Gesch., p. 695 sq.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The previous story, dear friends, implants in me a desire to tell you how, in similar fashion and not without fruitful effects, a worthy courtier derided the covetous habits of a very rich merchant. Although the burden of my tale is similar to the last, that is no reason for you to find it less agreeable, when you consider how much good eventually came of it. In Genoa, then, a long time ago, there lived a gentleman called Ermino de’ Grimaldi,1 who was generally acknowledged, on account of his vast wealth and huge estates, to be by far the richest citizen in the Italy of his day. Not only was he richer than any man in Italy, he was incomparably greedier and more tight-fisted than every other grasper or miser in the whole wide world. For he would entertain on a shoestring, and in contrast to the normal habits of the Genoese (who are wont to dress in the height of fashion), he would sooner go about in rags than spend any money on his personal appearance. Nor was his attitude to food and drink any different. It was therefore not surprising that he had lost the surname of Grimaldi and was simply known to one and all as Ermino Skinflint.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Of mediaeval divines Luther esteemed Nicolaus Lyra as a most useful commentator. He praises St. Bernard, who in his sermons "excels all other doctors, even Augustin." He speaks highly of Peter the Lombard, "the Master of Sentences," and calls him a "homo diligentissimus et excellentissimi ingenii," although he brought in many useless questions (Bindseil, III. 151; Erl. ed. LXII. 114). He calls Occam, whom he studied diligently, "summus dialecticus" (Bindseil, III. 138, 270). But upon the whole he hated the schoolmen and their master, "the damned heathen Aristotle," although he admits him to have been "optimus dialecticus," and learned from him and his commentators the art of logical reasoning. Even Thomas Aquinas, "the Angelic Doctor," whom the Lutheran scholastics of the seventeenth century highly and justly esteemed, he denounced as a chatterer (loquacissimus), who makes the Bible bend to Aristotle (Bindseil, III. 270, 286), and whose books are a fountain of all heresies, and destructive of the gospel ("der Brunn und Grundsuppe aller Ketzerei, Irrthums und Verleugnung des Evangeliums." Erl. ed. XXIV. 240). This is, of course, the language of prejudice and passion.—His views on Augustin are the most correct, because he knew him best, and liked him most. Melanchthon and Oecolampadius from fuller knowledge and milder temper judged more favorably and consistently of the fathers generally, and their invaluable services to Christian literature. § 86. Changes in the Views on the Ministry. Departure from the Episcopal Succession. Luther ordains a Deacon, and consecrates a Bishop. The Reformers unanimously rejected the sacerdotal character of the Christian ministry (except in a spiritual sense), and hence also the idea of a literal altar and sacrifice. No priest, no sacrifice. "Priest" is an abridgment of "presbyter,"706 and "Presbyter" is equivalent to "elder." It does not mean sacerdos in the New Testament, nor among the earliest ecclesiastical writers before Tertullian and Cyprian.707 Moreover, in Scripture usage "presbyter" and "bishop" are terms for one and the same office (as also in the Epistle of Clement of Rome, and the recently discovered "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles".708 This fact (conceded by Jerome and Chrysostom and the best modern scholars) was made the basis for presbyterian ordination in those Lutheran and Reformed churches which abolished episcopacy.709 In the place of a graded hierarchy, the Reformers taught the parity of ministers; and in the place of a special priesthood, offering the very body and blood of Christ, a general priesthood of believers, offering the sacrifices of prayer and praise for the one sacrifice offered for all time to come. Luther derived the lay-priesthood from baptism as an anointing by the Holy Spirit and an incorporation into Christ. "A layman with the Scriptures," he said, "is more to be believed than pope and council without the Scriptures."710

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Schröckh: vii. p. 213 sqq. Stuffken: De Theodosii M. in rem christianam meritis. Lugd. Batav. 1828 From this time heathenism approached, with slow but steady step, its inevitable dissolution, until it found an inglorious grave amid the storms of the great migration and the ruins of the empire of the Caesars, and in its death proclaimed the victory of Christianity. Emperors, bishops, and monks committed indeed manifold injustice in destroying temples and confiscating property; but that injustice was nothing compared with the bloody persecution of Christianity for three hundred years. The heathenism of ancient Greece and Rome died of internal decay, which no human power could prevent. After Julian, the succession of Christian emperors continued unbroken. On the day of his death, which was also the extinction of the Constantinian family, the general Jovian, a Christian (363–364), was chosen emperor by the army. He concluded with the Persians a disadvantageous but necessary peace, replaced the cross in the labarum, and restored to the church her privileges, but, beyond this, declared universal toleration in the spirit of Constantine. Under the circumstances, this was plainly the wisest policy. Like Constantine, also, he abstained from all interference with the internal affairs of the church, though for himself holding the Nicene faith and warmly favorable to Athanasius. He died in the thirty-third year of his age, after a brief reign of eight months. Augustin says, God took him away sooner than Julian, that no emperor might become a Christian for the sake of Constantine’s good fortune, but only for the sake of eternal life. His successor, Valentinian I. (died 375), though generally inclined to despotic measures, declared likewise for the policy of religious freedom,88 and, though personally an adherent of the Nicene orthodoxy, kept aloof from the doctrinal controversies; while his brother and co-emperor, Valens, who reigned in the East till 378, favored the Arians and persecuted the Catholics. Both, however, prohibited bloody sacrifices89 and divination. Maximin, the representative of Valentinian at Rome, proceeded with savage cruelty against all who were found guilty of the crime of magic, especially the Roman aristocracy. Soothsayers were burnt alive, while their meaner accomplices were beaten to death by straps loaded with lead. In almost every case recorded the magical arts can be traced to pagan religious usages. Under this reign heathenism was for the first time officially designated as paganismus, that is, peasant-religion; because it had almost entirely died out in the cities, and maintained only a decrepit and obscure existence in retired villages.90 What an inversion of the state of things in the second century, when Celsus contemptuously called Christianity a religion of mechanics and slaves! Of course large exceptions must in both cases be made.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  [Footnote 225: Lit. of those who _was_ held of the greatest casuists (_di quelli che de' maggior cassesi era tenuto_). This is another very obscure passage. The meaning of the word _cassesi_ is unknown and we can only guess it to be a dialectic (probably Venetian) corruption of the word _casisti_ (casuists). The Giunta edition separates the word thus, _casse si_, making _si_ a mere corroborative prefix to _era_, but I do not see how the alteration helps us, the word _casse_ (chests, boxes) being apparently meaningless in this connection.] There was, then, noble ladies, in Imola, a man of wicked and corrupt life, who was called Berto della Massa and whose lewd fashions, being well known of the Imolese, had brought him into such ill savour with them that there was none in the town who would credit him, even when he said sooth; wherefore, seeing that his shifts might no longer stand him in stead there, he removed in desperation to Venice, the receptacle of every kind of trash, thinking to find there new means of carrying on his wicked practices. There, as if conscience-stricken for the evil deeds done by him in the past, feigning himself overcome with the utmost humility and waxing devouter than any man alive, he went and turned Minor Friar and styled himself Fra Alberta da Imola; in which habit he proceeded to lead, to all appearance, a very austere life, greatly commending abstinence and mortification and never eating flesh nor drinking wine, whenas he had not thereof that which was to his liking. In short, scarce was any ware of him when from a thief, a pimp, a forger, a manslayer, he suddenly became a great preacher, without having for all that forsworn the vices aforesaid, whenas he might secretly put them in practice. Moreover, becoming a priest, he would still, whenas he celebrated mass at the altar, an he were seen of many, beweep our Saviour's passion, as one whom tears cost little, whenas he willed it. Brief, what with his preachings and his tears, he contrived on such wise to inveigle the Venetians that he was trustee and depository of well nigh every will made in the town and guardian of folk's monies, besides being confessor and counsellor of the most part of the men and women of the place; and doing thus, from wolf he was become shepherd and the fame of his sanctity was far greater in those parts than ever was that of St. Francis at Assisi.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  So Anichino got up and made his way to the garden with a switch of silver willow in his hand, and just as he was approaching the pine-tree, Egano, seeing him coming, stood up and came to meet him, as though with the intention of bidding him a most cordial welcome. But Anichino said: ‘So you came after all, did you, you filthy little whore? You thought me capable of wronging my master, did you? A thousand curses upon you!’ And raising his stick, he began to beat him. On hearing this outburst and catching sight of the stick, Egano took to his heels without saying a word, being closely pursued by Anichino, who kept on saying: ‘Take that, you shameless hussy, and may God punish you as you deserve! Mark my words, I shall tell Egano of this tomorrow!’ Bruised and battered all over, Egano returned as fast as he could to his bedroom, and his wife asked him whether Anichino had come to the garden. ‘Would to God that he hadn’t,’ said Egano, ‘for he mistook me for you, beat me black and blue with a cudgel, and addressed me by the foulest names that any wicked woman was ever called. I must say I thought it very strange that he should have spoken to you as he did with the intention of dishonouring me. But I see now that, finding you so gay and sociable, he simply wanted to put you to the test.’ Then the lady said: ‘Thanks be to God that he tested me with words, and saved his deeds for you! At least it can be said that his words tried my patience less severely than his deeds tried yours. But since he is so loyal to you, we should do him honour and hold him high in our esteem.’ ‘I agree with you entirely,’ said Egano. In view of what had happened, Egano came to the conclusion that he was blessed with the most faithful wife and the most loyal servant that any nobleman had ever possessed. And for this reason, whilst on many a future occasion they all three had a good laugh over the events of that particular night, at the same time it became far easier than it would otherwise have been for Anichino and the lady to do the thing that brought them pleasure and delight, at any rate for as long as Anichino chose to remain with Egano in Bologna.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Now, one day, Guido had walked from Orsammichele along the Corso degli Adimari as far as San Giovanni, which was a favourite walk of his because it took him past those great marble tombs, now to be found in Santa Reparata,3 and the numerous other graves that lie all around San Giovanni. As he was threading his way among the tombs, between the porphyry columns that stand in that spot and the door of San Giovanni, which was locked, Messer Betto and his friends came riding through the piazza of Santa Reparata, and on seeing Guido among all these tombs, they said: ‘Let’s go and torment him.’ And so, spurring their horses and making a mock charge, they were upon him almost before he had time to notice, and they began to taunt him, saying: ‘Guido, you spurn our company; but supposing you find that God doesn’t exist, what good will it do you?’ Finding himself surrounded, Guido promptly replied: ‘Gentlemen, in your own house you may say whatever you like to me.’ Then, placing a hand on one of the tombstones, which were very tall,4 he vaulted over the top of it, being very light and nimble, and landed on the other side, whence, having escaped from their clutches, he proceeded on his way. Betto and his companions were left staring at one another, then they began to declare that he was out of his mind, and that his remark was meaningless, because neither they themselves nor any of the other citizens, Guido included, owned the ground on which their horses were standing. But Messer Betto turned to them, and said: ‘You’re the ones who are out of your minds, if you can’t see what he meant. In a few words he has neatly paid us the most back-handed compliment I ever heard, because when you come to consider it, these tombs are the houses of the dead, this being the place where the dead are laid to rest and where they take up their abode. By describing it as our house, he wanted to show us that, by comparison with himself and other men of learning, all men who are as uncouth and unlettered as ourselves are worse off than the dead. So that, being in a graveyard, we are in our own house.’ Now that Guido’s meaning had been pointed out to them, they all felt suitably abashed, and they never taunted him again. And from that day forth, they looked upon Messer Betto as a paragon of shrewdness and intelligence. TENTH STORYFriar Cipolla promises a crowd of country folk that he will show them a feather of the Angel Gabriel, and on finding that some bits of coal have been put in its place, he proclaims that these were left over from the roasting of Saint Lawrence.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  And now, under the lead of one of the most talented, energetic, and notable Roman emperors, it once more made a systematic and vigorous effort to recover its ascendency in the Roman empire. But in the entire failure of this effort heathenism itself gave the strongest proof that it had outlived itself forever. It now became evident during the brief, but interesting and instructive episode of Julian’s reign, that the policy of Constantine was entirely judicious and consistent with the course of history itself, and that Christianity really carried all the moral vigor of the present and all the hopes of the future. At the same time this temporary persecution was a just punishment and wholesome discipline for a secularized church and clergy.58 Julian, surnamed the Apostate (Apostata), a nephew of Constantine the Great and cousin of Constantius, was born in the year 331, and was therefore only six years old when his uncle died. The general slaughter of his kindred, not excepting his father, at the change of the throne, could beget neither love for Constantius nor respect for his court Christianity. He afterwards ascribed his escape to the special favor of the old gods. He was systematically spoiled by false education and made the enemy of that very religion which pedantic teachers attempted to force upon his free and independent mind, and which they so poorly recommended by their lives. We have a striking parallel in more recent history in the case of Frederick the Great of Prussia. Julian was jealously watched by the emperor, and kept in rural retirement almost like a prisoner. With his step-brother Gallus, he received a nominally Christian training under the direction of the Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia and several eunuchs; he was baptized; even educated for the clerical order, and ordained a Lector.59 He prayed, fasted, celebrated the memory of the martyrs, paid the usual reverence to the bishops, besought the blessing of hermits, and read the Scriptures in the church of Nicomedia. Even his plays must wear the hue of devotion. But this despotic and mechanical force-work of a repulsively austere and fiercely polemic type of Christianity roused the intelligent, wakeful, and vigorous spirit of Julian to rebellion, and drove him over towards the heathen side. The Arian pseudo-Christianity of Constantius produced the heathen anti-Christianity of Julian; and the latter was a well-deserved punishment of the former. With enthusiasm and with untiring diligence the young prince studied Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the Neo-Platonists. The partial prohibition of such reading gave it double zest. He secretly obtained the lectures of the celebrated rhetorician Libanius, afterwards his eulogist, whose productions, however, represent the degeneracy of the heathen literature in that day, covering emptiness with a pompous and tawdry style, attractive only to a vitiated taste. He became acquainted by degrees with the most eminent representatives of heathenism, particularly the Neo-Platonic philosophers, rhetoricians, and priests, like Libanius, Aedesius, Maximus, and Chrysanthius.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Whenever anyone reproaches them with these and countless other wicked ways of theirs, they consider themselves acquitted from every charge, however serious, simply by replying: “Do as we say, not as we do” To hear them talk, one would think it was easier for the sheep to be strong-willed and law-abiding than it is for the shepherds. But this specious answer of theirs does not fool everyone by any means, and a great many of them know it. ‘The friars of today want you to do as they say, or in other words fill their purses with money, confide your secrets to them, remain chaste, practise patience, forgive all wrongs, and take care to speak no evil, all of which are good, seemly and edifying goals to pursue. But why? Simply so that they can do the things they will be prevented from doing if they are done by the laity. Who will deny that laziness cannot survive without money to support it? If we were to spend our money on our own pleasures, the friar would no longer be able to idle away his time in the cloisters; if we were to go pursuing the ladies, the friars would be put out of business; if we failed to practise patience and forgive all wrongs, the friar would no longer have the effrontery to call upon us in our own homes and corrupt our families. But why should I elaborate every point in detail? Every time they come out with that hoary old excuse of theirs, they condemn themselves in the eyes of all intelligent men and women. Why do they not choose to remain within their own walls, if they feel themselves unable to behave in a chaste and godly manner? Or if they really must rub shoulders with the laity, why do they not follow that other holy text from the Gospel: “Then Christ began to act and to teach”? Let them set an example, before they start preaching to the rest of us. In my time I’ve seen a thousand of them laying siege, paying visits and making love, not only to ordinary women but to nuns in convents; and some of them were the ones who ranted loudest from the pulpit. Are these, then, the people whose advice we should follow? Anyone is free to do so if he likes, but God knows whether he will be acting wisely. ‘However, even supposing we granted that the friar who censured you was right in this instance, and that to break one’s marriage vows is a very grave offence, is it not far worse to steal? Is it not far worse to murder a man or send him wandering through the world in exile? Everyone will agree that it is, because after all, for a woman to have intimate relations with a man is a natural sin, but to rob him or to kill him or expel him is to act from evil intention.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The same liberal sentiments we find among the early Greek fathers (Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen), and in Zwingli. Bigoted Catholics hated and feared him, as much as the liberal admired and lauded him. "He laid the egg," they said, "which Luther hatched."521 They perverted his name into Errasmus because of his errors, Arasmus because he ploughed up old truths and traditions, Erasinus because he had made himself an ass by his writings. They even called him Behemoth and Antichrist. The Sorbonne condemned thirty-seven articles extracted from his writings in 1527. His books were burned in Spain, and long after his death placed on the Index in Rome. In his last word to his popish enemies who identified him with Luther to ruin both together, he writes: "For the future I despise them, and I wish I had always done so; for it is no pleasure to drown the croaking of frogs. Let them say, with their stout defiance of divine and human laws, ’We ought to obey God rather than men.’ That was well said by the Apostles, and even on their lips it is not without a certain propriety; only it is not the same God in the two cases. The God of the Apostles was the Maker of heaven and earth: their God is their belly. Fare ye well."522 His Works. The literary labors of Erasmus may be divided into three classes: — I. Works edited. Their number proves his marvellous industry and enterprise. He published the ancient Latin classics, Cicero, Terence, Seneca, Livy, Pliny; and the Greek classics with Latin translations, Euripides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plutarch, Lucian. He edited the principal church fathers (some for the first time from MSS.); namely, Jerome (1516–1518; ed. ii., 1526; ed. iii., a year after his death), Cyprian (1520), Athanasius (in a Latin version, 1522), Hilarius (1523), Irenaeus (Latin, 1526, ed. princeps, very defective), Ambrose (1527), Augustin (1529), Epiphanius (1529), Chrysostom on Matthew (1530), Basil (in Greek, 1532; he called him the "Christian Demosthenes"), Origen (in Latin, 1536). He wrote the prefaces and dedications. He published the Annotations of Laurentius Valla on the New Testament (1505 and 1526), a copy of which he had found by chance on the shelves of an old library. The most important of his edited works is the Greek New Testament, with a Latin translation.523 II. Original works on general literature. His "Adages" (Adagia), begun at Oxford, dedicated to Lord Mountjoy, first published in Paris in 1500, and much enlarged in subsequent editions,524 is an anthology of forty-one hundred and fifty-one Greek and Latin proverbs, similitudes, and sentences,—a sort of dictionary and commonplace-book, brimful of learning, illustrations, anecdotes, historical and biographical sketches, attacks on monks, priests, and kings, and about ten thousand quotations from Greek poets, literally translated into the Latin in the metre of the original.

• From Trash (1988)

  Once a year Shirley would go alone to visit her mother, but neither her parents nor her brothers ever visited her. The only thing the children knew about their grandparents was Shirley’s stories about their house, how big and clean it was, how the porch shone with soapstoned wood and baskets of sweet herbs that Grandma Wilmer used in her cooking, how the neighbors admired her mother and looked up to her daddy. By contrast, their father’s father, a widower, was nothing but a drunk. “Vegetables . . . hell!” That man sells whiskey out of that roadside stand, whiskey I tell you, not tomatoes and squash. He just has those runty old tomatoes there to keep the law off.” “Now Shirley, you know that an’t true,” Tucker always protested. “I know what’s true, Tucker Boatwright, and I won’t have these children spared the truth. You want them to grow up like their grandfather? Like those lazy sisters of yours in their dirt-floor cabins? I surely don’t. They grow up to live in dirt and I’ll renounce them.” “That woman hates her children,” the neighbors all said. They did not say that the children hated her. It was not possible to know what those children thought, so quiet and still they were. They all had the same face, the same pinched features, colorless hair, and nervous hands. Only their eyes varied in shade, from Bo’s seawater blue to Mattie’s grapeskin hazel. In the warmer weather, they all took on the same shade of deep red-brown tan, a tan acquired from staying away from the house as much as they could, and from long hours spent weeding and picking at their mama’s direction in a half a dozen farmers’ fields. “Money is hard come by,” Shirley told them, pocketing eight cents a week on the boys, and three on the girls. “Dreams are all that come free, dreams and talk. And that’s all lazy people know about. You should see those bent-necks down at the mill, trying to pretend they’re working when they’re dreaming or talking. Talk about how badly they’re used. Trash don’t know the meaning of use. Just like you kids.” She tucked the pennies in her kerchief and that in her apron. “The way you eat, you’d think you didn’t know the cost of boiled rice.” “Two cents a pound.” When Mattie spoke, all the other children dropped their heads, though Bo and Tucker Junior always turned their faces so they could look up from the side. They knew Mattie was crazy, but they worshiped her craziness and suspected that without her they might have all curled up and died. “You little whore!” Shirley gripped the fabric of her apron in twisted fingers. Her voice was an outraged hiss. “You an’t worth two cents a night yourself.”

• From Trash (1988)

  Yankees ate boiled eggs, laughed at grits but ate them in big helpings, and had plenty of money to leave outrageous tips but might leave nothing for no reason that I could figure out. It wasn’t the accent that marked Yankees. They talked different, but all kinds of different. There seemed to be a great many varieties of them, not just northerners, but westerners, Canadians, black people who talked oddly enough to show they were foreign, and occasionally strangers who didn’t even speak English. Some were friendly, some deliberately nasty. All of them were Yankees, strangers, unpredictable people with an enraging attitude of superiority who would say the rudest things as if they didn’t know what an insult was. “They’re the ones the world was made for,” Harriet told me late one night. “You and me, your mama, all of us, we just hold a place in the landscape for them. Far as they’re concerned, once we’re out of sight we just disappear.” Mabel plain hated them. Yankees didn’t even look when she rolled her soft wide hips. “Son of a bitch,” she’d say when some fish-eyed, clipped-tongue stranger would look right through her and leave her less than fifteen cents. “He must think we get fat on the honey of his smile.” Which was even funnier when you’d seen that the man hadn’t smiled at all. “But give me an inch of edge and I can handle them,” she’d tell me. “Sweets, you just stretch that drawl. Talk like you’re from Mississippi, and they’ll eat it up. For some reason, Yankees got strange sentimental notions about Mississippi.” “They’re strange about other things, too,” Mama would throw in. “They think they can ask you personal questions just ’cause you served them a cup of coffee.” Some salesman once asked her where she got her hose with the black thread sewed up the back and Mama hadn’t forgiven him yet. But the thing everyone told me and told me again was that you just couldn’t trust yourself with them. Nobody bet on Yankee tips, they might leave anything. Once someone even left a New York City subway token. Mama thought it a curiosity but not the equivalent of real money. Another one ordered one cup of coffee to go and twenty packs of sugar. “They made road liquor out of it,” Mabel said. “Just add an ounce of vodka and set it down by the engine exhaust for a month or so. It’ll cook up into a bitter poison that’ll knock you cross-eyed.” It sounded dangerous to me, but Mabel didn’t think so. “Not that I would drink it,” she’d say, “but I wouldn’t fault a man who did.”

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  “So,” Dan recalls, “I said, ‘If it’s that time, that’s cool.’ ” The Lafferty brothers visited Circus Circus early on the afternoon of August 7, but they didn’t see Debbie dealing cards at any of the blackjack tables. According to Dan, he inquired of Ron, “‘Should I go and ask for her?’ which I knew would spring the trap.” Ron told him to go ahead and do it. When Dan approached a pit boss and asked to speak with Debbie, Dan says, “his eyes got big and he quickly disappeared.” At that point Ron and Dan strolled over to one of the casino’s eateries and got in line for the lunch buffet. As they stood in the queue, Dan says, he could see men who appeared to be FBI agents “peeking around corners and stuff.” A moment later a swarm of police officers “rushed up from behind and put guns to our heads and said, ‘Don’t move or we’ll blow your brains out.’ I just smiled. It was kind of fun.” Both Lafferty brothers surrendered without a fight and were placed in the Reno jail under extraordinary security. TWENTY-THREE JUDGMENT IN PROVO Critical examination of the lives and beliefs of gurus demonstrates that our psychiatric labels and our conceptions of what is or is not mental illness are woefully inadequate. How, for example, does one distinguish an unorthodox or bizarre faith from delusion? . . . Gurus are isolated people, dependent upon their disciples, with no possibility of being disciplined by a Church or criticized by contemporaries. They are above the law. The guru usurps the place of God. Whether gurus have suffered from manic-depressive illness, schizophrenia, or any other form of recognized, diagnosable mental illness is interesting but ultimately unimportant. What distinguishes gurus from more orthodox teachers is not their manic-depressive mood swings, not their thought disorders, not their delusional beliefs, not their hallucinatory visions, not their mystical states of ecstasy: it is their narcissism. * ANTHONY STORR, FEET OF CLAY It’s August 5, 2002, a Monday morning, and outside Utah’s Fourth Judicial District Courthouse merchants and businessmen are striding purposefully to work in downtown Provo. Although it’s still early in the day, the heat is already rising from the pavement in visible waves. Inside the courthouse, the clock on the wall shows 9:21 when the bailiff abruptly shouts, “All rise! The Honorable Steven Hansen presiding!” The murmur from the gallery subsides, and a moment later a side door swings open, through which sixty-one-year-old Ron Lafferty, attired in orange coveralls with UDC INMATE stenciled across the back, is hustled into the courtroom by four armed sheriff’s deputies. Ron’s reddish-brown hair, now streaked with gray and thinning across the crown, is neatly trimmed. Except for a bushy, Yosemite Sam mustache, he is clean-shaven. For the past few months, according to the prison grapevine, he has been obsessively lifting weights and working out; his bulging forearms and thick shoulders appear to confirm the rumor.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  A few short years ago, in our native city, where fraud and cunning prosper more than love or loyalty, there was a noblewoman of striking beauty and impeccable breeding, who was endowed by Nature with as lofty a temperament and shrewd an intellect as could be found in any other woman of her time. Although I could disclose her name, along with those of the other persons involved in this story, I have no intention of doing so, for if I did, certain people still living would be made to look utterly contemptible, whereas the whole matter should really be passed off as a huge joke. This lady, being of gentle birth and finding herself married off to a master woollen-draper because he happened to be very rich, was unable to stifle her heartfelt contempt, for she was firmly of the opinion that no man of low condition, however wealthy, was deserving of a noble wife. And on discovering that all he was capable of, despite his massive wealth, was distinguishing wool from cotton, supervising the setting up of a loom, or debating the virtues of a particular yarn with a spinner-woman, she resolved that as far as it lay within her power she would have nothing whatsoever to do with his beastly caresses. Moreover she was determined to seek her pleasure elsewhere, in the company of one who seemed more worthy of her affection, and so it was that she fell deeply in love with an extremely eligible man in his middle thirties. And whenever a day passed without her having set eyes upon him, she was restless for the whole of the following night. However, the gentleman suspected nothing of all this, and took no notice of her; and for her part, being very cautious, she would not venture to declare her love by dispatching a maidservant or writing him a letter, for fear of the dangers that this might entail. But having perceived that he was on very friendly terms with a certain priest, a rotund, uncouth individual who was nevertheless regarded as an outstandingly able friar on account of his very saintly way of life, she calculated that this fellow would serve as an ideal go-between for her and the man she loved. And so, after reflecting on the strategy she would adopt, she paid a visit, at an appropriate hour of the day, to the church where he was to be found, and having sought him out, she asked him whether he would agree to confess her. Since he could tell at a glance that she was a lady of quality, the friar gladly heard her confession, and when she had got to the end of it, she continued as follows:

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Fair ladies, it behoves me to relate a little story against a class of persons who keep on offending us without our being able to retaliate. I am referring to the priests, who have proclaimed a crusade against our wives, and who seem to think, when they succeed in laying one of them on her back, that they have earned full remission of all their sins, as surely as if they had brought the Sultan back from Alexandria to Avignon1 in chains. Whereas we poor dupes who belong to the laity cannot do the same to them, albeit we may vent our spleen against their mothers, sisters, mistresses and daughters with no less passion than the priests display when assailing our wives. But however that may be, I propose to tell you this tale of country love, more amusing for its ending than conspicuous for its length, from which you will be able to draw a useful moral, namely, that you shouldn’t believe everything that a priest tells you. I say then, that in Varlungo,2 which as all of you know or will possibly have heard is a hamlet, no great distance from here, there once lived a worthy priest, robust and vigorous in the service of the ladies, who, albeit he was none too proficient at reading books, always had a rich stock of good and holy aphorisms with which to entertain his parishioners under the Elm every Sunday. And when-ever the men of the parish were away from their homes, he was far more assiduous in calling on their wives than any of his predecessors, bringing them fairings and holy water and a candle-end or two, and giving them his blessing.

• From Trash (1988)

  It was not possible to know what those children thought, so quiet and still they were. They all had the same face, the same pinched features, colorless hair, and nervous hands. Only their eyes varied in shade, from Bo’s seawater blue to Mattie’s grapeskin hazel. In the warmer weather, they all took on the same shade of deep red-brown tan, a tan acquired from staying away from the house as much as they could, and from long hours spent weeding and picking at their mama’s direction in a half a dozen farmers’ fields. “Money is hard come by,” Shirley told them, pocketing eight cents a week on the boys, and three on the girls. “Dreams are all that come free, dreams and talk. And that’s all lazy people know about. You should see those bent-necks down at the mill, trying to pretend they’re working when they’re dreaming or talking. Talk about how badly they’re used. Trash don’t know the meaning of use. Just like you kids.” She tucked the pennies in her kerchief and that in her apron. “The way you eat, you’d think you didn’t know the cost of boiled rice.” “Two cents a pound.” When Mattie spoke, all the other children dropped their heads, though Bo and Tucker Junior always turned their faces so they could look up from the side. They knew Mattie was crazy, but they worshiped her craziness and suspected that without her they might have all curled up and died. “You little whore!” Shirley gripped the fabric of her apron in twisted fingers. Her voice was an outraged hiss. “You an’t worth two cents a night yourself.” Mattie’s tanned features paled, but she kept her mouth closed and her eyes level with her mother’s. They stared each other down, while Tucker wiped his forehead and licked dry cracked lips. “It’s got to be suppertime,” Tucker pleaded finally. Shirley nodded slowly. “Let the whore cook it.” “Whores and thieves and bastards,” she cursed them when she went into labor that last time. She cursed steadily for hours till Tucker sent all the children off to one of his sisters’. “I never wanted no man to touch me. I sure never wanted you to touch me. You put death and dirt in me every time. Death, you hear me? All I’ve got out of you is death and mud and worms.” “It’s just the pain,” the midwife told Tucker, but neither of them really believed that. Tucker believed this was the time when Shirley told him the whole truth. The midwife did squeeze Tucker’s arm once and say, “Do you notice how she don’t really scream?”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘My servant has nine failings, any one of which, had it been found in Solomon or Aristotle or Seneca, would have sufficed to vitiate all the ingenuity, all the wisdom, and all the saintliness they ever possessed. So you can imagine what this fellow must be like, considering that he hasn’t a scrap of ingenuity, wisdom or saintliness, and possesses all nine.’ Friar Cipolla had put these nine failings into rhyme, so that whenever he was asked what they were, he replied: ‘I’ll tell you: he’s untruthful, distasteful and slothful; negligent, disobedient, and truculent; careless, witless and graceless. Apart from this, he has one or two other little foibles, that are best passed over in silence. But the funniest thing about him is that wherever he goes, he’s always wanting to find himself a wife and rent a house; and because he has a big, black, greasy beard, he thinks he’s very handsome and seductive, and that every woman he meets is desperately in love with him; and if he were left to his own devices, he’d be so busy chasing the girls that he could lose his breeches and be none the wiser. All the same I must confess that he’s a great help to me, because he won’t allow me to be burdened with anybody’s secrets, but always insists on sharing them with me; and if anyone asks me a question, he’s so afraid I won’t be able to answer that he does it for me, putting in a quick “yes” or a quick “no” as the occasion appears to merit.’ This, then, was the man Friar Cipolla had left behind at the inn, with strict instructions not to allow anyone to touch his belongings, in particular his saddlebags, which contained his sacred bits and pieces.

• From Trash (1988)

  She got on the bus two stops after Reese and me, walking stolidly past a dozen hooting boys and another dozen flushed and whispering girls. As she made her way up the aisle, I watched each boy slide to the end of his seat to block her sitting with him and every girl flinch away as if whatever Shannon had might be catching. In the seat ahead of us Danny Powell leaned far over into the aisle and began to make retching noises. “Cootie Train! Cootie Train!” somebody yelled as the bus lurched into motion and Shannon still hadn’t found a seat. I watched her face—impassive, contemptuous, and stubborn. Sweat was showing on her dress but nothing showed in her face except for the eyes. There was fire in those pink eyes, a deep fire I recognized, banked and raging. Before I knew it I was on my feet and leaning forward to catch her arm. I pulled her into our row without a word. Reese stared at me like I was crazy, but Shannon settled herself and started cleaning her bottle-glass lenses as if nothing at all was happening. I glared at Danny Powell’s open mouth until he turned away from us. Reese pulled a strand of her lank blond hair into her mouth and pretended she was sitting alone. Slowly, the boys sitting near us turned their heads and began to mutter to each other. There was one soft “Cootie Bitch” hissed in my direction, but no yelling. Nobody knew exactly why I had taken a shine to Shannon, but everyone at Greenville Elementary knew me and my family— particularly my matched sets of cousins, big unruly boys who would just as soon toss a boy as a penny against the school walls if they heard of an insult against any of us. Shannon Pearl spent a good five minutes cleaning her glasses and then sat silent for the rest of the ride to school. I understood intuitively that she would not say anything, would in fact generously pretend to have fallen into our seat. I sat there beside her watching the pinched faces of my classmates as they kept looking back toward us. Just the way they stared made me want to start a conversation with Shannon. I imagined us discussing all the enemies we had in common while half the bus craned their necks to try to hear. But I couldn’t bring myself to actually do that, couldn’t even imagine what to say to her. Not till the bus crossed the railroad tracks at the south corner of Greenville Elementary did I manage to force my mouth open enough to say my name and then Reese’s. She nodded impartially and whispered “Shannon Pearl” before taking off her glasses to begin cleaning them all over again. With her glasses off she half shut her eyes and hunched her shoulders.